Normally the gig we play here is that Francesca is the smart, bookish one and I’m the popular one who happens to be kind of shallow and dim. But that’s only partly true. Francesca IS bookish and smart, and let’s face it, I’m totally the Mean Girl at this lunch table and my shallowness knows no depths but dude, I know stuff, and not just important things like how to drink out of a glass without getting lipstick on it and how to make the perfect deviled egg, either. I know OTHER stuff. Stuff about THINGS.
So I was happily popping away writing today’s Friday Fierceness (which will come later in the day) when I checked Francesca’s post and liketa apoplexied myself. Y’all I was mortified, MORTIFIED, at that book list. It was like those dreams I have where I’m front row at Lacroix directly across from Anna Wintour and I’m wearing Crocs and a particularly ill-conceived Renaissance festival dress.
I’m not saying those books aren’t worth reading –although some of them aren’t– but that list is howlingly, embarrassingly narrow. Unless of course you’re a middle school girl with precocious reading habits and a penchant for bonnet films, in which case, well played and by the way you might as well start hoarding cats now because we ALL know how that’s going to end. (What? Too harsh?)
Anyhoodle, I’ve decided to chalk up a little list of the 100 works –or collections of works– I think embrace the broader view of what it means to be a well-read English-speaker. You’ll forgive any gaps because I came up with it off the top of my head this morning, while sputtering like a Tourettes-afflicted kettle saying extremely uncharitable things about the state of letters today that would get me fired in a hot minute from any job I’d ever held.
How To Be Well-Read in 100 Mostly Not Boring Books –A Plumcake Joint
I’ll admit I’m probably a little Anglo-centric and weigh a bit heavy on the classics –BECAUSE YOU SHOULD KNOW THEM– and I’ve copped out with some of the Major Works because really, I think so much of it is a matter of taste. Does it really matter that I adore Bleak House but couldn’t slog through Great Expectations? No. But I’ve made an effort to include great works from around the world, not just around the home counties.
Anyway, how many have you read? What am I missing? ( note: Catcher in the Rye is NOT missing because it suck-diddly-ucks)
Is your favorite book on here?
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